The Los Angeles Dodgers revealed on Wednesday that they had refused to accept an LGBTQ charity and drag performance group to take part in their annual Pride Night due to pressure from conservatives, including Sen. Marco Rubio. The Sisters of Indulgence are a group of “queer and trans nuns” who are committed to “community service, ministry and outreach to those on the edges, and to promoting human rights, respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment,” according to their self-description.
The Sisters, who are notorious for their outrageous, gender-neutral religious garb and performances, have outraged Catholics nearly from the moment of its founding in 1979. In their statement, the Dodgers made reference to “people who have been offended by the sisters’ inclusion in our evening,” and stated that their decision to remove them was taken “in an effort not to distract from the great benefits” of the Pride event. Senior Director of Public Relations for the Dodgers declined to make any additional comments.
Sen. Rubio wrote Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred earlier this week to complain that the Dodgers were not “inclusive and welcoming to everyone,” as Manfred has argued the league should be, by receiving a “Community Hero Award” from “a group of gay and transgender drag performers that intentionally mock and degrade Christians.” Additionally, he charged that the group was pushing a “woke far-left anti-Catholic agenda.” The Sisters were portrayed as anti-Catholic campaigners by conservative media sites like the New York Post and Fox News, although since their founding, the organization has generated well over a million dollars for charities helping underserved regions. After being excluded from the Dodgers’ Pride Night, Rubio celebrated by tweeting, “For once, common sense.”
Their “mission is to uplift our community and all marginalized groups, especially the ones ignored by larger organizations,” they underlined, adding that they are “both silly and serious,” using “flamboyance in service to our charity work.”
(In their answer, the Sisters made it clear that while all genders are represented in their membership, including non-binary individuals, they “unequivocally support the rights of transgender people.”)
Drag queen activist Sister Roma, a member of the Sisters since the late 1980s, claimed that the Dodgers had given in to “pseudo-Christian homophobes,” and that this was precisely what the Sisters had been fighting against for decades. In response to that tweet, Honey Mahogany, a RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant who went on to become the first black and trans Chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party in 2021, asked, “Why even bother having a Pride night if you’re going to cave to voices of anti-lgbtq hate.”
The Dodgers will celebrate their 10th anniversary of Pride Night on June 16; it was never probable that homophobes and transphobes would come in the first place. Singer David Archuleta will sing the National Anthem. Billie Jean King, a married former tennis player, and Ilana Kloss, a minority owner of the Dodgers, will also attend the celebrations. Since the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have been stripped of the award, it’s unknown if the team will nominate a different recipient for this year’s Community Hero Award.
The Dodgers will undoubtedly sell a lot of caps with rainbow emblems, that much is certain.
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